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Fast paced farce timed for laughs Changing Rooms Derby Theatre **** BERNARD and Jacqueline are a successful
Parisian couple who, with this being Paris, each have a bit on the side. When each thinks the
other is out of the city for the weekend then both see it as the perfect
opportunity to turn playing away into a home fixture. So after dutifully supposedly leaving the City of
Light they both dutifully sneak back, young paramours in tow, for what
turns out to be not so much a romantic tryst but more a lovers'
convention. In short - chaos. Keeping the peace is Nana, Bernard's sort of left
over nanny, who, like everyone else, should be away for the weekend but,
like everyone else, has her own reasons for sleeping in her own bed – if
ever she manages to get that far. In most farces the complications grow around mistaken identities, ridiculous situations and trousers around ankles all building to the big finale when one party or the other discovers the guilty secret and any living happily thereafter is subject to strict conditions usually imposed by a wife with the upper hand.. Judy Buxton is the vivacious, seductive wife, Jacqueline, with a toy boy lover In Changing Rooms French writer
Marc Camoletti, who wrote Boeing-Boeing by the
way, doesn't want any of
the horizontal indiscretions discovered. The whole
object of this exercise is to get through the
evening with guilty secrets – and thus all
dangly bits and future well being – still
intact. He skillfully keeps the main
proponents apart with the plot even managing to survive chance meetings
between Bernard and his wife's lover Robert and Jacqueline and her
husband's tasty little number, Brigitte, complete with her black basque. We even have toy boy and girl Robert and Brigitte running into each other as the sitting room turns into Piccadilly Circus with Nana directing all the traffic in and out of four doors with ever more outlandish excuses of why everyone is there and how the apartment block will be lucky to survive the play. To make it all work needs impeccable timing as
well as a good tempo and on opening night the cast of five kept up a
cracking pace to drive the action loping along as they very quickly found
an easy rhythm; when you get that right the audience stops looking at
watches and shuffling in seats and sits back to enjoy. Judy Buxton (On the Up) makes for a glamorous and
seductive wife, a bit of a cougar as the modern parlance goes, expecting
much of her young toy boy Robert. Robert meanwhile, played with a nice turn of
visual comedy by Damien Lyne (Midsomer Murders), would rather be in his
own apartment, a location with less risk of irate husbands bursting in,
and is finding nerves affecting his performance - in the bedroom, not the play I hasten
to add - so is falling somewhat short of expectations.
The problem seems to be catching, as far as the
men are concerned, with Bernard, played with a gloriously manic resolve
by Tom Roberts (Doctors), finding it difficult to even get started with
the young and remarkably nubile Brigitte despite his sex god attire of
boxers, vest and socks (maybe that's where we have been going wrong,
lads!) but . . . remember this is a bloke in his 40s who still has a
nanny! Bimbo Brigitte spends most of the play in a basque, and why not, and Alexis Caley (Dr Who) shows a nice turn of comedy as the remarkably naïve – if a touch homicidal - would-be lover of Government official Bernard. She even thinks that he is actually going to marry her, an expectation which gives the good, or in this case, bad, Bernard an added complication in his illicit, if somewhat struggling, love life. Jilted bimbos are not the best of bedfellows, so to speak. Keeping everyone apart and holding the show together is Nana, played superbly by well-known TV and stage regular Debbie Norman. Nana was the nanny who sort of just hung around as Bernard grew up and eventually married, becoming his somewhat eccentric housekeeper. Her part is critical, the ringmaster of the whole circus, bursting in with impeccable timing with plot saving interruptions among the scores of entrances and exits and mixing that with a nice line in comedy – her bit up here and bit down there dance is a highlight while her leap into Bernard's lap brought the house down - and probably tears to his eyes.
A fine cast, fast pace, plenty of laughs and a clever script in
this Ian Dickens' production make for an enjoyable evening. To 15-07-11 Roger Clarke
This was our first visit to Derby Theatre which
is now included in our What's On listings and what a fine regional
theatre it is. It looks a bit like a betting shop from the outside
within the Westfield Shopping Centre but don't let that put you off.
Inside it is a bit like a mini-Birmingham Rep with 535 seats in wide
rows but with less rake on the seating. There is plenty of leg room and the seats are remarkably comfortable. Car parking, just beneath the theatre, is £1.70 after 6pm. |
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